298
submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

With a two-letter word, Australians have struck down the first attempt at constitutional change in 24 years, major media outlets reported, a move experts say will inflict lasting damage on First Nations people and suspend any hopes of modernizing the nation’s founding document.

Early results from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) suggested that most of the country’s 17.6 million registered voters had written No on their ballots, and CNN affiliates 9 News, Sky News and SBS all projected no path forward for the Yes campaign.

The proposal, to recognize Indigenous people in the constitution and create an Indigenous body to advise government on policies that affect them, needed a majority nationally and in four of six states to pass.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] alvvayson@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Sure, I understand the idea and it would have been good if it passed.

But they can still voice their opinions, we have free speech, and change in the future is still possible.

[-] batmangrundies@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As others have stated, we explicitly don't have free speech in Australia.

We also don't have any laws requiring political campaigns to be truthful. And as we saw, the day after the vote was done. All the leaders of the "No" campaign flat out abandoned indigenous people and explicitly said they wouldn't be fronting a new referendum for recognition in the constitution without the voice. A promise they made repeatedly.

The leader of the opposition who spearheaded the no campaign has been called a fascist by his peers. And once commented that if elected he would do away with parliament and elections if he could.

this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
298 points (97.2% liked)

World News

38969 readers
2430 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS